


Phoenix Triumphant

by Lorde_Shadowz



Series: Phoenix Chronicles [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ancient Egypt, Animagus Harry Potter, Animagus Severus Snape, F/M, Phoenix magic, Phoenixes, Powerful Harry Potter, Powerful Severus Snape, Ramfamouths, Ramfatongue, That Means Talking to Birds, fully au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26451928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorde_Shadowz/pseuds/Lorde_Shadowz
Summary: Harry and Severus have defeated Voldemort, but that is certainly not the end of their problems. With Unspeakables, Ministry officials and a totally unknown threat to contend with, they have their work cut out for them. It's a good thing they have an eternity to do it in!
Relationships: Gabrielle Delacour/Harry Potter, Severus Snape/Miriam Malfoy, canon pairings
Series: Phoenix Chronicles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825435
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	1. Chapter 1

The war was over, and Harry Potter did not know what to do. Oh, to be sure, there were all sorts of things in the short term. The particular afternoon that our story starts, for instance, he was in the Hospital Wing, assisting Madame Pomfrey.

"Cho, it's going to be ok."

Said girl cast him a worried glance with her milky-white eyes. "How can you say that when not even Madame Pomfrey can do anything?" she asked, nearly out of her mind with worry and pain. She had been hexed with a painful dark blindness hex that no one could recognize after the battle had actually officially ended, and not even the experts called over from St. Mungo's could figure out a cure. Not to mention that crying only seemed to make the curse more painful, and she had been doing her fair share of that, since her best friend, Marietta Edgecombe, had died in the Battle of Hogwarts. She'd been further traumatized by having to fight her reanimated body, but Madame Pomfrey had been able to help her- somewhat- with coping with that, by giving her mild sleeping potions and counseling.

Harry hesitated, then slowly reached out. "Cho, I'm going to have to touch your face, maybe even your eyelids. I'm going to try to cure you."

The girl trembled, but sat perfectly still as Harry reached tentatively out to touch her eyelids, making her wince at the pain exacerbated by even the slightest pressure. Harry winced in sympathy- his phoenix magic told him that the curse on her eyes was a very dark and nasty one, probably a pureblood family secret- but did not draw away, only let his magic out naturally. She gave a little cry, shuddering all over, and then opened her eyes and stared at him. Harry started. Her eyes were the palest of lavenders now, rather than their usual deep brown, but they seemed to be fully functional. "It...I can see!" she burst out in a breathy whisper. Then she was throwing her arms around him, her breasts squishing awkwardly against his chest, piña colada scent seemingly everywhere, and he gave her a little pat on the back and tried not to squirm. Despite all the things that Harry had gone through in all his years at Hogwarts, girls were the one thing he couldn't understand and found it difficult to deal with. It might even have gotten more awkward still, as Cho didn't seem like she was going to let him go anytime soon, but then Madame Pomfrey came over to ask him if he could use his powers to try to heal Neville's irreparably-scorched arm.

"Sorry Nev, no promises," Harry said nervously, laying his hands on his friend's arm.

"It's fine," Neville responded, letting him lift the ruined member. "I got Bellatrix good; it's almost a trophy, you know. At least that's what Seamus says. Personally, I'd rather have my arm, but..."

"Yeah," Harry said noncommittally, internally angry with Seamus for likening his friend's ruined arm to a "trophy". Still, there was nothing he could do about it except heal the boy's arm, and Harry, although reasonably sure he could do it, had not exactly tested his healing on more than a mortally injured Professor Snape and several minor wounds and hexes that his friends had received in battle. He let his magic do what it was going to do, and abruptly the withered, blackened arm began to smooth and turn a healthier color, albeit slower than most of the wounds he had tried to heal. In approximately fifteen minutes (the longest a healing had ever taken short of the time that he had brought Snape back from the brink of death) the arm had mostly healed, except for some redness, stiffness, and slight blotchy discoloration. "I think that's all I can do," he said finally, rather disappointed.

Neville, however, was looking at his once-again functional arm in awe. "Sweet Merlin, Harry," he said, staring at it. "You did it!"

Harry blushed a little and replied with a "yeah," before Madame Pomfrey called him over to help her with another badly-injured student. Harry spent the rest of the afternoon helping in the Hogwarts Hospital wing, patching up the combatants with his formidable phoenix magic, as, while Madame Pomfrey could heal most things, there were a number of injuries which could be healed more efficiently, more cleanly, or more completely with phoenix magic.

At last, there was only one more student left in the hospital wing who had not yet been looked at.

"Yes Miss Brown? Where are you hurt?"

"I...I got bitten." Lavender Brown responded nervously. "Werewolf or regular wizard; it wasn't a vampire. Can you scan me?"

Madame Pomfrey didn't look too worried at this, but she drew her wand. "Even if it _was_ a werewolf," she lectured, "there is a sixty-percent chance you don't have lycanthropy since last night was not a full moon, but I can check if you want me too. I suspect that you will only have had miniscule exposure, which would only give you violent mood-swings around your time of the month and possibly give you a preference for rare meat."

"Please do the scan," was the Gryffindor girl's tentative response.

Madame Pomfrey moved her wand in a quick, even, repetitive movement, casting a full-body scan on the Gryffindor girl. All at once, she paled and cast it again. And again.

"Ma'am?"

"Miss Brown, I'm so sorry..."

Lavender's eyes overflowed with tears. "At least I'm still alive," she said quietly. "Maybe I can find a job in the muggle world."

Harry stepped forward. "Maybe I could try?" Why hadn't he thought about trying to cure lycanthropy before?

Lavender shot him a wide-eyed, hopeful look, but Madame Pomfrey was already shaking her head. "I don't want you to try that, Harry; a werecurse is not like a regular bite wound. You have no idea what it could do to you; it could even make you a werewolf yourself!"

"So I'll turn into a ravening animal every month and have to lock myself up. And? It'd be horrible, but it's only once a month..."

"You have an animagus form, Mr. Potter. If you were to be turned, you could die or become a warpwolf, that is to say, a werewolf with some of the characteristics of your form. I can't have you risk it."

Harry was tempted to go ahead with it anyway- he could sense that his power would be equal to safely containing or destroying the curse, but he didn't want to risk it, not yet. "I'll figure something out, Lavender," he said determinedly. Perhaps this was the more long-term goal that he was looking for, trying to find cures for the incurable. But it hurt, to see his innocent, if a little ditzy, housemate be afflicted by something which would shave ten years off her life and make it more miserable than it might have been, as well as making her less valuable to the job market. "I'll figure something out," he repeated, looking into her frightened brown eyes. "Maybe I can extract some of my magic...distill it, maybe, so that I won't be harmed when casting. Or Professor Snape could make the wolfsbane and I could try to infuse it with phoenix magic. Hmm..." and he picked up a stack of leftover forms for something-or-other and began writing on the back with a no-spill quill, brainstorming. If he could find a cure for lycanthropy, he could help Remus, help so many other wizards who were considered second-class citizens because of an ailment they could not help. And perhaps finding a cure for lycanthropy was what Sirius had meant in his vision, when he had died at Voldemort's feet and gotten a chance to talk to his godfather. Sirius had said something about "Voldie's not the last or even the biggest problem you've got ahead of you. Of course, since you're immortal, you've got one hell of a lot of problems to deal with, at least until you chose to die, but I hope you're not going to be joining us anytime soon..."

Harry was still muttering and writing when Madame Pomfrey told him to shoo, and so he gave Lavender an absent-minded pat on the shoulder and left the hospital wing, heading for Professor Snape's office. Today was the last day of the impromptu holiday that they had all been given after the battle, to be used for post-war parties, funeral and trial attendance (Pansy Parkinson had actually been sentenced to a year in a now mercifully dementor-free Azkaban, and there were a few more trials coming up, although Harry had not had a chance to keep track of them all) and other activities, although they all knew that this entire school year was likely to be a wash, what with all the various deaths and incarcerations of family members, especially the Death Eater families, the crusade that the media and ministry were waging against anything "dark", and on and on.

And Harry still did not know what he was going to do in the long term. Not to mention that for him, the "long term" was the next few millennia, until he decided to move on.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day might has well have been an extension of the holiday. Almost half the students were missing for various familial reasons, and the students who weren't were either hungover from the impromptu post-war holiday that had occured the night before or Hermione were gossiping about the latest Daily Prophet, which had outdid itself with sheer drama, flamboyance, and idiocy, as one article detailed the "Tragic Past of the Man Who Killed You-Know-Who" (Professor Snape was not amused, and ended up taking five points from every student who talked about it in class or tried to ask him about it) and another article speculated on the "Mysterious Magic Which Defrayed the Killing Curse."

Harry did his best to study, but being constantly cornered in the hallways: "Potter, is it true that you can heal anything?" "Can you heal this bruise?" "What the hell was that?""Is it true that you're shagging Snape?" was not exactly conducive to concentration. And then there were the classes, of which only Snape's and Mcgonagall's were mostly still functional, the former because the old tabby was not afraid to hex her classes silent and didn't except "I stayed up till three at a party" for an excuse for late work, and the latter because everyone was in awe of him. To be fair, there was literally no way you could _not_ be after having seen him fight his way through Death Eaters, duel Voldemort, and literally be reborn in silver fire...

There were more trials coming up. Harry had to miss several classes, too, because he had to speak at every one of them; some only to make sure that it wasn't a kangaroo court, but others because he had to actually defend the innocent. Now, with the war over, the Ministry wanted scapegoats...and ex-Death Eaters were perfect for that. Still Harry's name carried a lot of weight despite the fact that he had not actually vanquished Voldemort in the end, and when one combined his political clout with Snape's newfound power, well, the two of them were unstoppable.

With the war over, however, Harry found that other witches and wizards wanted to shove every conceivable burden they could find onto his shoulders, as if the replace the emptiness that came from Voldemort finally being gone.

The aurors wanted him to join them. St Mungos offered a prime position. Dumbledore offered the post of DADA teacher. Harry wanted nothing to do with any of it. Why couldn't the public accept that he was not their toy and Chosen One anymore? Was it too much to ask that he be able to finish his schooling in peace, and then maybe take a gap year?

Apparently not. Rita Skeeter was in fine mettle, using her acid pen to attempt to write skewed accounts of Voldemort's defeat and false stories about Harry and Snape's "torrid affair" which was quite nonexistent, especially because Snape had loved Harry's mother and Harry had a crush on Fleur's little sister, Gabrielle. The worst part of it was, slander was apparently not a crime in the Wizarding World. The most Harry could do was try to get them to print a retraction, which would likely not work at all. Harry had to spend Merlin knows how much time just to convince the majority of Gryffindor house that he was neither gay nor in a relationship with Snape, and that still didn't stop the gossip and the lurid and cruel comments from other houses or random howlers.

Harry very much wanted to buy out the _Prophet_ himself, and print whatever he wanted to (none of which would have anything to do with himself or Snape). He might even have done it, too; he was tired of ending up on the front page- but he didn't actually know if he had enough gold to pull it off, considering that Dumbledore had his vault key and he had not been to Gringotts since third year. Damn, that was another thing he had to do- that and figure out what affects his Lordship might have on him if and when he decided to take it up.

The second week into the last semester, a pile of Ministry and Gringotts letters fell onto his plate during breakfast, becoming splattered with mango and bacon grease in the process. Harry idly picked them up, expecting the usual summons to court- Bulstrode- the younger, he meant- had not yet had her trial.

The request to come to Gringotts at once, on business too sensitive to be communicated via letter, was rather unnerving- but, then, so was the letter calling him to attend his and Snape's Order of Merlin gifting ceremonies. Sweet Circe! He should have expected it, as Snape acidly told him when he commented, but it simply hadn't occurred to him that he was going to be rewarded by the Ministry and Merlin Foundation itself for something he was literally prophesied to do. Nor was he looking forward to it, because he had no idea how to comport himself at _any_ formal function, much less an Order of Merlin awarding ceremony- and his own, no less. Hell, he didn't even have dress robes!

"Mr. Potter?"

Harry glanced up. Professor Mcgonagall was standing next to the table that he had secured in the library, allegedly to do his studying for Charms. (Although he was spending much more time trying to prevent himself from hexing gossipers and researching Triple Sacred Bonds in the Restricted Section, as he had been given a pass.) "Yes Professor?"

"It has fallen to me to escort you to Diagon Alley, seeing as you are not old enough to leave Hogwarts unaccompanied. I, personally, believe that you could manage, but there are regulations to think about."

That and left-over Death Eaters, Harry thought grimly, grateful that Professor Dumbledore had listened to his request and was letting him go to Diagon with an escort. "Thank you professor. When are we going?" He knew better than to bowl her over with questions, either; indeed, he had gone through this routine with her multiple times in the past few weeks, what with having to go to trials or help Madame Pomfrey in the hospital wing, and so on. Not that he minded her company, either, even if he did wish he could go alone.

"Now, if you are amenable. You have a free period, correct?"

"Yes professor." Harry grinned at the older woman. Within moments, they were headed to the apparition point, where Mcgonagall took him by slide-along to Diagon Alley.

"Gringotts first?" she asked crisply. Harry nodded, and then they approached the bank, Mcgonagall always just a little behind her charge.

Harry had not seen the goblin-run bank for years, but it was not exactly a place that one could easily forget. Vast, made of stately white marble, and guarded by fierce, lanky, misshapen creatures armed with poleaxes, Gringotts, despite being run by "creatures" was the largest and most important bank in the British Wizarding World, and it showed. Harry was awed even now as he approached one of the lines of tellers.

"Your business?" the teller asked in a rather bored tone when the line had at last crawled so that Harry was in front.

Harry took a deep breath, remembering the letter he had been sent that morning and hoping he would not screw this up. It had said only that he was to ask for Silverjam, as the information that the goblins wanted to convey to him was too sensitive to be sent by mail. "I wish to speak to Account Manager Silverjam," he managed firmly.

Utter silence, broken only by Minerva Mcgonagall's faint gasp. Apparently this goblin was important, and as it seemed, very much so. Harry was starting to get extremely nervous when at last the goblin said "You are expected?"

"I...believe so, yes, according to Gringotts correspondence."

"Very well then," the teller said, still gruffly but a little more respectfully. "Spitfire will take you."

The aforementioned goblin came forward. "Come," she (?) said, and Harry began to follow. So did Mcgonagall, but the she goblin raised a palm to halt her. "Mr. Potter only."

Mcgonagall did not seem very surprised. She straightened, dug in her tartan handbag for a moment, and withdrew Harry's Gringotts key, lips pursed. "I will wait for you in the lobby, Mr. Potter."

"Thanks professor," Harry replied. Then he followed Spitfire into the bowels of the ancient bank.

They walked through long tunnels of earth and stone, lit not by torches but by fonts of eerily glowing green liquid, lighting the passageways surprisingly brightly but without hurting Harry's eyes. Spitfire walked calmly but surely, led seemingly by runes carved over every point at which the passages diverged or met, until at last they reached a door in the rock. Spitfire did not even knock, but as soon as they stopped in front of it, a gravelly male goblin voice rang out into the corridor. "State your business."

Spitfire said something intelligible in Gobbledegook and the door swung smoothly open on well-oiled hinges, admitting Harry and his guide into a large room that might have resembled the ornate parlour at Grimmauld place, except that its walls were earthen and covered with jeweled weapons that looked entirely too sharp to be ornamental. And at a desk in the middle of the room sat a goblin, evidently Account Manager Silverjam.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry started just the slightest bit, hand flying to his wand, which was still tucked in his pocket. "Account Manager Silverjam? You wanted to see me sir?"

The goblin looked momentarily startled at this honorific, but then simply nodded. "Yes, Mr. Potter, about several things. Take a seat. Runner Spitfire, you are dismissed."

The runner nodded and left in silence, and Harry was alone in the goblin's office. Harry took a seat, then jumped as the goblin waved a hand, summoning a tea service. "We may be here a while," was all he said. Harry's unease grew.

"What did you want to speak about?" Harry asked at last, unable to keep still. He hoped desperately that what he had just said was not an faux pas in goblin customs, but the goblin didn't seem to mind.

"First of all, there's the matter of your accounts. You should have received statements from Gringotts at the age of eleven, for you and your magical guardian to look over. We thought at first that you had no interest in your accounts and your guardian noticed no abnormalities, but as you never came in to accept your lordships, or even sent in a reply to our queries, we began to grow concerned. Recently we received some rather...disturbing intelligence that you never actually received them, which leads me to believe that your supposed 'guardian' has put an illegal mail ward on you without your consent."

"What?!"

"Added to that, with the conquer of Lord Voldemort and his marked followers, you can now claim the Gaunt, Slytherin, Lestrange, Carrow, Avery, Flint, Rosier, Parkinson, Yaxley, Selwyn, Crouch, Bulstrode, Burke and Travers lines, as Gaunt and Slytherin are Voldemort's titles, and the others, since the last lords of the families belonged to him, are yours as well, unless you wish to leave them in the care of their heirs and accept a tithe rather than a lordship."

Harry found himself unable to stop staring.

"In any case, even had you not defeated the Dark Lord, and even had we not suspected that your statements were being intercepted, the fact remains that due to the Sacred Triple Bond connecting you to Severus Snape, all of his accounts are automatically accessible, and your accounts are able to be accessed by him as well. This can be changed, of course, but with that particular kind of bond it is assumed that your accounts would be combined.

Harry stared, and then swallowed hard. "Right, so my statements are being intercepted, I can claim Voldemort's titles as well as all of his Death Eaters', and my accounts have been automatically combined with Professor Snape's?"

"Indeed."

Harry had to stop and just take a full seven minutes to think. "Ok," he said finally. "First of all, I would like to audit my accounts...and is it possible for a Gringotts cursebreaker to figure out who cast the mail ward and remove it?"

"That can be done, yes."

"How does one claim a lordship or twenty?"

"You would need to see if the lordship rings would accept you. If they do, you may sign the paperwork to take on your lordships, and you have a year and a half to the day to learn and execute your duties. I highly suggest taking an inheritance test, however; not only would that insure your safety, as it would tell you which titles are safe to claim, but it could also tell you if there are any other titles that we did not know about previously. There is a price, but I am very certain that you can afford it."

"How do I know if the rings accept me?" Harry asked, interested.

"If you are blood related to the house, nothing will happen, or it will sting. This is usually because family magic does not seem you mature enough or you are illegitimate or not from the main family branch. If you are not blood related, or not closely, then depending on the ring and the family it represents it may only burn or fall off, or it may kill you. The Black house in particular is not the most...tolerant ring."

"What does it do?" asked Harry, swallowing.

"I believe it slowly burns all the flesh of your bones, so it is a very good thing that you are a Black by blood."

That did _not_ ease Harry's apprehension, and he at last decided to change the subject. "About my and Snape's accounts, can they be separated?"

"All liquid assets will be moved back to their proper places from the combined vault. As for heirlooms and such, they remained in the family vaults the entire time, and so this you cou can disallow him to open or enter your vaults. If he wants to deny access to his vaults for you, he will have to come to Gringotts himself."

Harry nodded at this, and sent Snape a quick mental message before turning back to the goblin. "Right, so I'd like to have my accounts audited, to make an appointment with a cursebreaker, to separate Snape's and my accounts, to get an inheritance test if possible, and then to claim my lordships, and then there are some investments that I'd like to make."

The goblin looked quite pleased. (At least that's what Harry thought; he wasn't exactly an expert in the physiology of magical races. For all he knew, Silverjam could be grimacing in anger, and wasn't _that_ a pleasant thought. He needed to learn more about the Wizarding World.) "Very well, that can be arranged, Mr. Potter."

They discussed times for some little bit before finally hashing out days and hours for Harry's appointments, as Mcgonagall was likely still waiting in the lobby of Gringotts. At long last, Harry leaned back.

"Is there anything else you wished to talk about?"

Silverjam hesitated. "There is one message that I must bring you on behalf of the goblin nation, though not the bank. The first is that Senior Director Ragnok would like to speak with you and your bondmate at your earliest convenience."

Harry's eyes nearly popped out of his skull, though he had enough sense to recollect himself quickly. Despite the deplorable lack of a Wizarding Culture class at Hogwarts, everyone had heard of the goblin king, who was said to be a thousand years old and to have instigated the 1919 goblin rebellion. For him to want to talk to Harry... "I- please convey my sincere thanks for such an honor. I will speak to Snape at once. What time would be most efficient?"

"Noon tomorrow would be best."

"Right," Harry said, sucking in a deep and shaky breath. "We'll be there." As if he would miss an appointment with the goblin king himself!


	3. Chapter 3

The Department of Mysteries was far, far larger than even the minister of magic knew. Their budget was classified, of course, and the thousands of galleons they were given were put to many different uses, including excavating the ground below the Ministry and converting it to their own rooms. Indeed, their department, being (due to a legal technicality) affiliated with but not part of the Ministry, had not been inspected or audited in close to six hundred years. Well, in theory the Ministry was inspecting them, but it was only cursory- they only looked in the rooms that had been originally part of the Department, as the rest were quite off limits.

Which was a good thing, as it turned out. The new rooms contained experiments that the Ministry would probably not have approved of or sanctioned, had they known. Of course, as of right now, it was not necessary to have the Ministry's approval; a law concerning _that_ had been put in to place quite a long time ago, as the Department had argued that the Ministry knew nothing of what they were working on and could not be trusted to let them do what was necessary for the entirety of the Wizarding World, and that many of the officials were biased, and would not want them working on some of the things they did, no matter how necessary it was to understand them.

Here, in the staffroom, experts in every field of magical study convened, many of them light years ahead of anything that regular witches and wizards could conceive of. A spell-crafter chatted with a expert in soul magic by the coffee maker, and a Romanian who had dedicated his life to the study of magical viruses, specifically the ones that caused vampirism, lycanthropy, and wendigo syndrome was showing a stack of notes to the resident radical Healer. Nowhere else in all the world were wizarding intellectuals able to talk to one another so freely, without censure. Of course, all that had a cost. Some of their experiments were unpleasant in the extreme- Director Miriam Malfoy (H2507-p) had unfortunately even worked on some of them with her colleagues, but they were necessary. Magical genetics, soul magic, blood magic, and dark magic were only a few of the things that they studied here, and all of them were important. If one had a strong stomach, there was no better or freer place in all the world to study magic, and other things, in all their forms.

Down here, magical animals thought long extinct were bred, or even cloned back. Here there were records of all the magical phenomena that had ever been witnessed, and here, too, was where many of the cures for magical diseases that were now commonplace had been developed. But here, too, many atrocities had been committed in the name of science, and Miriam had finally decided it was time to call a staff meeting, her first since she had taken the position of Head of the Unspeakables.

And so she walked up to the podium at the front of the room and rang the great summoning bell, once, twice, and again.

It took only a few minutes for the rest of the Unspeakables to come pouring into the staffroom, gathering around her podium. In approximately fifteen, they were all there, in identical Unspeakable robes but without their hoods, as there was no need to hide their faces from the rest of their colleagues.

"Welcome, and thank you for arriving so quickly!" Best to start out simple. Miriam honestly didn't know what to say, but she knew she would figure out as she went along; Malfoys were quite good at rhetoric, having had private tutors in the subject since infancy.

The others all looked at her a little perplexed, as staff meetings in this department were really quite rare, even with a new head's ascendancy. She ignored the looks. "I have called this department meeting both as something of a progress check and to outline a few new goals and rules I would like to put in place, now that I am head. First, may I have reports of the progress in each of your teams?"

The other Unspeakbles murmered among themselves; this sort of thing had never been done before. A progress report? How quaint. Wasn't that something that didn't apply here? She could hear all the murmers, and sighed internally. No doubt this would be a long meeting. But it was time to show her authority, and it was actually long past time to instigate progress reports, especially as they were in every department but this by now.

"Toadvine," she began (no sense in using code names here, since they were all vowed to silence anyway) "What has been accomplished in your team?"

"Well," said the warding expert cautiously, "How far do you want us to go back?"

"Start with this year," Miriam told her.

"We've been working on blood wards, discovering how they work and how efficient they are as opposed to the other basic warding types, and we've also been collaborating with Tiresias trying to translate an old Greco-Roman warding text and trying out the wards in a spare ritual room. There's one based on salt that's quite fascinating and another that seems very similar to an old Babylonian sexual ritual, except that it is in Latin and a number of the minor details are necessarily different. Would you like me to elaborate?"

"Not at the moment, no. If you could have someone write all of your discoveries from the past year up in a coherent manner and send them to me, that would be great."

"O...kay," said Jenna Toadvine cautiously. "We'll have to to you by noon tomorrow. Is this going to be a regular occurrence?'

Miriam could see all the other Unspeakables' heads rise at this. "Yes. From this moment on I would like monthly and yearly progress reports, which are to be permanently archived."

"May I ask what brought this to mind?" another Unspeakable, Jade something, spoke up.

Miriam hesitated. "Yes. For all our breakthroughs, we are actually remarkably behind the times, and I would like to change that."

The others started muttering among themselves at this, and Miriam could hear snatches of their conversation: "...behind the times?" "Upstart. How dare she just..." "What does she think she's..."

Mirium abruptly raised her hand for silence. "All the other departments have already instigated this, and I also believe that reports would be most helpful for our own records, even if no one outside our department sees them."

"We already have records," retorted Jade, narrowing his eyes. "They are in the archives if you cared to look at them." His tone implied that she ought to have done her research.

"I should not have to go digging through the archives when I want to know how my department is doing, Patil," she said, thankfully remembering his last name. Using his first would of course have been overly familiar. "Just because the information is there doesn't necessarily mean it's accessible or in chronological order. What I need is a progress report, a summary of what you have accomplished in a given month or year."

Jade Patil reluctantly nodded, apparently seeing what she was getting at, as did most of the others.

"Right, that's settled." she said. "Winkworth, I suppose your team has been doing well?"

"We've synthesized the virus that causes vampirism, and are now working on an experimental vaccine," Trevor Winkworth replied. "With your permission we would like to collaborate with St. Mungo's."

"Permission granted, and I would like the details later."

Trevor nodded.

"Whitehorn?"

"We're working on trying to see if we can unlock squibs' magic," he told her. "Magic is genetic, of course, and we think that once we can check for in utero magic, we could do something, like modify the baby to have an active rather than a recessive gene. That said, it would be better if witches and wizards would stop inbreeding, which would just solve all of our problems in one go."

Being pureblood, Miriam knew exactly what he was talking about, as her little brother had been a squib. Thank Merlin the French branch of the family didn't kill their squibs! "I see. Anything else?"

"Well, we've been genetically modifying some magical animals; I'll give you the details later. We've also found that it's approximately sixty-four times as likely for a muggleborn to actually be distantly related to a wizarding family than to be a genuine anomaly, so we are working on a ritual that can remove or transfer magic."

Miriam winced. There could be no good uses for that, unless perhaps it could be used to transfer magic to someone who had lost it through severe magical exhaustion or a magical accident. "I want the details of that magic removal ritual to be code Ω," she told them, and several pairs of eyes widened around the staffroom. Code Ω meant that a spell, ritual or potion was top secret even among the Unspeakables: the files that mentioned it would all be classified and the entire thing would be put under a _Fidelius_ modified for information with the Head as Secret Keeper, while the Head herself would have to vow never to reveal it to anyone unless the circumstances forced her to, and never reveal it to someone who himself had vowed to keep it a secret and never use it for evil. "I also want you to start working on a ritual that can reverse the other, or that can give a magicless person magic."

"Yes Ma'am," Whitehorn replied, seeming to grasp the problems that could arise.

"Very well. Giltner?'

The Potions specialist raised her head. "We've been collaborating with Tiresias and Indira's team working on a potion to allow an ordinary wizard to speak parseltongue, modified from a translation potion, and we've also been modifying a tumor removal potion to be a male abortion potion for those whose partners got them pregnant without their consent. We have s few more lesser projects that are mostly just brainstorming at the moment."

"Excellent job. Greely?"

"We're working on making matching rings that allow the wearers to communicate mind-to-mind, and we're collaborating with Giltner's team on a liquid form of the _imperious_ , but there has been no progress so far and the test subject had to be sent to St. Mungo's," the mind magic specialist told her. Miriam's eyes narrowed.

"Speaking of test subjects, was he or she willing?"

The way Greely avoided her eyes made her think that that was not the case.

"I will be speaking to you about that later. Anything else?"

"We've been collaborating with Whitehorn's team trying to map the genome of natural empaths, zopaths, and telepaths," he offered.

"Right. I'll want more details later." Damn, this was going to take a long time. "Webber?"

"I'll send you the list of spells we came up with and their arithmantic calculations later; there are too many to talk about now. I would like to ask about patenting some of the safer ones, though..."

"Run them by me in detail later and I'll give you permissions based on what they do."

Webber did not look satisfied, but he probably figured that was going to be the best he was going to get, which it was. Miriam was not just going to blindly give him blanket approval on publishing new and unknown spells, however useful they might be to the public.

"Cabell, how about your team?"

Richard Cabell sighed. "Charms as a science doesn't have much new ground to cover. Most of us are just helping out the spell-crafting team brush up on their charms theory."

"That's not true," broke in one of the members of Cabell's team. "There's the house elf thing."

"House elf thing?" Miriam enquired, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh. Oh yes." To her surprise and amusement, Cabell actually blushed. "We're studying the difference between regular household charms and house elf magic. It's fascinating, really. Plus I never really knew how interesting house elves were before."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You know they don't seem like much at first, but they're actually interesting to talk to. Their culture is fascinating, and they can do things with their magic that wouldn't even occur to most of us. It's really an entire unexplored sector of research."

She smiled. "Well, just carry on then. Just be humane. No vivisection or anything like that."

Cabell, thankfully, looked horrified at the very thought, and promised to be humane at once. Which was more than some team leaders would do, she knew.

"Mordrake?"

The pureblood stepped forward. "The magiarcheology team has been doing well," he said formally. "We would like to request funds for an expedition to El Dorado, however. We also have some findings from the Tibetan dig to owl you."

"Funding granted, and have the findings in my mailbox no later than Tuesday."

Leon Mordrake nodded. "Very well."

Miriam heard the reports of the magianthropology team, the dark magic team, the wand study team (metal wands seemed promising and some interesting wands with triple or obscure cores, unusual woods such as whomping willow and unusual lengths seemed promising), the magizoology and herbology teams, the astronomy and temporal teams, and even the magical nutrition team before finally they hit a rather large snag.

"Sallow? How's the transfiguration team?"

Martie Sallow huffed a long sigh. "Not good. We were studying the effects of human transfiguration on an expectant mother, but we had to drop everything when the subject died. And then there's the thing about Potter."

Miriam straightened. Sallow _couldn't_ have said what Miriam thought she'd just said. "Pardon?"

"I _said_ , we had to put a stop to our research on human transfiguration due to the death of the subject. And then there's Potter's refusal to-"

"I heard you perfectly well the first time," Miriam broke in. "Let me get this straight. You killed an expecting witch."

"Muggle, actually, but-"

"Even worse. I'm assuming that since she was a muggle she didn't concern to any of this?"

"Well, no, but-"

It was at this moment that Miriam saw red. _Gryffindor_ red. "Right. That stops now," she hissed, actually beginning to shake.

"Malfoy-"

"That's boss or Head to you," Miriam said. "And as of today all human or humanoid experimentation stops. In twenty-four hours, I will inspect every team's project room, and I will also be using veritaserum."

"Ma'am-"

"If at any time experimentation on wizards, muggles, squibs, or sentient magical creatures becomes necessary, you will have to get permission from me or any future Head," Miriam went on relentlessly. "And I am adding a clause in the Unspeakable Vows about experimental ethics. Now what was all this about Potter? I assume Harry Potter?"

Sallow drew herself up defiantly, evidently preparing for a speech that would no doubt incite a long and unpleasant discussion. "You've read the papers, haven't you?"

Miriam had not, as she had no interest in what the media was saying and was usually bogged down with paperwork anyway. "No. Why?" She'd known, of course, that a number of wizards in her department had wanted to have a look at Potter in a general sense, but she'd thought that that fervor had died down a while back.

"You know that Jennings had a mishap in the Love Room?"

"Yes. Get to the point, will you?" Miriam was in no mood for Sallow's nonsense.

"The reason that Jennings was in the Love Room was because of Harry Potter."

One silver-blonde eyebrow shot up. "What?"

"We recovered Jennings' notes from the Love Room, and from what we could gather from them and from what Jennings could remember from his encounter with Potter, the boy is off all charts at this point," Sallow went on doggedly. "He's a phoenix animagus."

That elicited multiple gasps all across the room, even from Miriam's own throat.

"He can flame teleport just like a phoenix, he can heal instinctively, he had wild magic that's unimaginably powerful, and added to that, the idiot boy performed the Rite of _Flamma Aeterna_ on his Potions Professor Severus Snape, which not only healed all his wounds and removed his Dark Mark, but also bonded the two with a Sacred Triple Bond."

More gasps greeted this announcement.

"Mr. Snape apparently has the same powers Potter has, including the potential to become a phoenix animagus, although he has not experimented with his as much as Potter had. He actually deaged Professor Dumbledore to age forty, however, and healed an unbreakable curse. I have both of their private medical files here, and...how can you not want to summon them down here for some tests, boss? This is unprecedented!"

"I would, but only with their consent, as it would be their bodies that we would be studying," Miriam retorted. "I suspect that Jennings was not so considerate as to ask?"

Sallow wouldn't meet her eyes. "Potter literally banished Jennings from Hogwarts to the Love Room! Don't you think that such power is dangerous? He needs to be studied so that we can stop him if he goes out of control!"

Miriam's lips twitched. "Did Jennings do something that deserved being banished to the Love Room from Hogwarts?"

"He just asked Potter and Snape to come with him."

Knowing Jennings, he probably hadn't exactly _asked_ , per say.

"You know that isn't true!" broke in one of Sallow's teammates at that moment. "Snape was too injured to get out of bed, first of all, and both of them refused to come. Jennings tried to force the issue."

Sallow looked rather sour at that. Miriam, however, was livid. "Serve Jennings right then! Do I actually have to add a rule that says 'Don't bother bedridden wizards for things that can wait'?"

"We have to get a look at them though," broke in another Unspeakable whose name (as Miriam thought) was Sabrina. "Not only is all of that entirely new, something which could potentially be the root of a new branch of magical theory, but that kind of power level...we need to figure out how to dampen it if necessary, for if either of them go dark."

"A phoenix can't go dark; it would self-destruct," one of the magizoologists broke in. "So no worries on that front, although I do agree that if we can, we should try to let them run some tests and scans..."

Miriam nodded. "I can get behind that. I _would_ love to bring them down here, as long as it is voluntary on their part."

It was then that Amita, an African witch who rarely spoke, raised her head. "Phœnixes can't go dark," she began in her musical voice. "But phoenix animagi can. We still have to keep on our guard."

"What do you mean?" Miriam asked. "I thought this was the first instance of a phoenix animagus?"

"No, it isn't," the historian of the Unspeakables responded solemnly. "The first and only instance of a phoenix animagus before this was Ra Imhotep II, Imhotep the Mad."


End file.
